MoviePass May Launch Streaming Service, CEO Says

The comment, made on CNBC, caused stock of the parent company to surge 20 percent.

The owner of MoviePass, which sells a month's worth of movie tickets for the price of one, saw its shares surge 20 percent on Monday after CEO Mitch Lowe hinted the company might also get into streaming media.

"It may be at some point we launch a streaming service," Lowe said Monday on CNBC during a conversation about Netflix, Roku and Disney's upcoming subscription digital product.

Lowe was a co-founding executive at Netflix before becoming CEO of MoviePass, majority-owned by Helios and Matheson Analytics. MoviePass gives subscribers a ticket to a movie theater every day for $9.95 a month. The service is controversial given that AMC Entertainment objects on the grounds that it devalues the moviegoing experience.

Since MoviePass buys tickets for its subscribers at the going rate, it presumably is losing money, but Lowe told The Hollywood Reporter it will become profitable by selling marketing data related to its subscribers and by partnering with studios and others that crave the attention of millions of dedicated moviegoers.

Shares of Helios and Matheson surged $2.06 to $12.33 on Monday after Lowe's appearance on CNBC. Last week, the stock surged nearly 50 percent on news it struck a deal to borrow a much-needed $100 million, and a small portion of that is expected to be used to acquire the remaining portion of MoviePass it doesn't already own.

Helios and Matheson is an analytics company that recently acquired Zone Technologies, which operates RedZone Map, an app that uses GPS and crime data to make travel safer for its users.